ATLANTA: A VIEWER'S GUIDESports of The Times; On Fourth Try, America's First 'World' Olympics

By DAVE ANDERSON

Published: July 14, 1996

ONE is remembered for a boycott, another for a Babe, the third for a song. And all three for something that was missing.

But when President Clinton proclaims "let the games begin" Friday night, the Olympic flame of the fourth Summer Games in the United States will glow through Atlanta's heat with virtually the entire world, almost 200 nations, here for the first time.

In 1984 the Soviet Union and other Communist-bloc nations stayed away from Los Angeles, apparently in reprisal for the American-led boycott by more than 30 nations of the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow following the Soviets' invasion of Afghanistan.

In 1932, when Babe Didrikson showed that women were athletes too, only 39 nations were represented in Los Angeles, where the 121 female competitors were allowed to enter only three events and were lodged in hotels outside the first Olympic Village.

In 1904, people sang "Meet me in St. Looie, Looie, meet me at the Fair," meaning the World's Fair in St. Louis, where the Olympics were held, but only 11 nations met there. Great Britain and France thought the Midwest to be too remote for their athletes.

In those third Summer Games of the modern Olympics (after Athens in 1896 and Paris in 1900), American athletes earned 77 gold medals in St. Louis, where the World's Fair's concession stands popularized the ice cream cone and iced tea.

But after the small turnout of athletes and spectators in St. Louis, Athens offered to be the permanent host.

As a compromise, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the resuscitator of the Olympics, scheduled an unofficial mid-Olympics in Athens in 1906.

With America worshiping the Olympic decathlete Jim Thorpe in 1912 and the swimmer Johnny Weissmuller (later a movie Tarzan) in 1924 and 1928, Los Angeles was awarded the 1932 Summer Games, which Babe Didrikson dominated.

As an 18-year-old wonder woman out of Beaumont, Tex., the sixth of seven children of Norwegian immigrant parents, she literally won the women's national Amateur Athletic Union track and field team title all by herself that year.

The only member of the Employers Casualty Insurance team from Dallas, she won the javelin, the shot-put, the long jump, the 80-meter hurdles and the baseball throw, tied for first in the high jump and finished fourth in the discus for a total of 30 points. The Illinois Women's Athletic Club, with 22 competitors, finished second with 22 points.

At the Olympics, she set world records in winning the gold medal in the javelin and the 80-meter hurdles. In the high jump, she shared the world record with Jean Shiley at 5 feet 5 inches, but she was awarded the silver medal because her last jump was ruled invalid. She had dived head first over the bar, then a no-no.

"Is there anything you don't play?" she was asked.

"Yeah," she replied in her Texas twang. "Dolls."

In 1984, Los Angeles again was the host, but the glory of the United States' 83 gold medals was diluted by the absence of the Soviet-bloc nations. Not that any absentee athletes would have prevented Carl Lewis from matching Jesse Owens's record four gold medals in 1936 at Berlin: the 100, the 200, the long jump and the anchor leg of the 4x100 relay.

But when Lewis departed after fouling on his second long jump, he was booed for not trying for the world record.

"It got cold very quickly," he explained. "I was a little sore after the second jump. I didn't want to risk it. My goal is the four gold medals, not the world record in the long jump."

Lewis got the four golds, but Mary Decker didn't get any. In the most memorable moment of those Olympics, she fell in the 3,000 after clipping the heels of Zola Budd, the barefoot South African competing for the British team.

"It will be with me for a long time," Decker said later, "but it was an accident."

With a perfect 10 in the vault, the gymnast Mary Lou Retton charmed America with a gold in the women's all-around and a basketball player named Michael Jordan, shortly after being drafted by the Chicago Bulls out of the University of North Carolina, provided a preview of his aerial act on a gold-medal basketball team coached by Bobby Knight.

Now the Summer Games are here again, this time in Atlanta instead of in Los Angeles or St. Louis.

And for the first time, the world is here for the Olympics too. That should make it the best time.

Photos: The men's 1,500-meter final at the 1932 Summer Games in LosAngeles. (Allsport/I.O.C.); Babe Didrikson could do it all, including the javelin throw. (Associated Press)